Here is a little brain-food for anyone interested in such.

ResearchChannel (www.researchchannel.org) is a TV channel that features academic/scientific programming - mostly in the form of lectures and discussions. The lectures are delivered by researchers in their respective fields. The subject areas the site covers are: Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics, Computer Science and Engineering, Health and Medicine, K-12 and Education, Sciences, Social Sciences. They have the channel available live online and the programs can be downloaded separately as well!

A few lectures that I found interesting:
- Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge [Robotics]
- UW/Microsoft 8th Symposium in Computational Linguistics
- Internet2 Overview
- Is Evolution an Algorithmic Process?
- How Does Order Arise in the Universe?
- Sexual Evolution: From X to Y
- Brain Computer Interface Systems: Progress and Opportunities

Gobble it up?

I went to take the trash out today only to find it was snowinggg! Winter has passed so far without a hint of snow except for a random morning sometime ago when there was sprinkle of snow that covered less than half of an inch. Like Calvin says, that doesn't count as snowing

P.S: Busy with work and reading tons of stuff thus the lack of blog updates...

It was only a few days ago that I raved about Microsoft's Vista and here again I am going to rave about another of Microsoft's latest creations: Microsoft Photosynth. The technology is currently development but Microsoft made a public tecnology preview available on its Live Labs pages late last year.

Photosynth is an application where a pool of photographs of a place are analysed and a 3D view is contructed using the 2D world portrayed in the photos. The photos can be of different sizes, quality and can be one of any of the overall picture. The technology allows the user to "Fly" through the reconstruction, zoom in, walk in all directions and is an as immersive experience as it can get. The technology is pretty innovative because it is able to use normal photographs which may very well be taken by different people at different times and then compile them in such a way that a scene is constructed in 3D.

I was pretty impressed when I saw it around the time it was released but it was only recently that I spent sometime reading the technology behind it. Computer vision algorithms calculate the perspectives, pattern recognition methods indentify and tag images on unique features and then all of it is mashed up together to give a smooth viewing experience. Some things are impressive from looks and some become even more impressive when you learn a bit of how it all works!

- Check out the Photosynth homepage
- View the intro video

Like elsewhere in the world, Maldives is host to a variety of substances that have been known and used by the local people for achieving altered states of the mind. Oshani (Datura stramonium) and Afihun (Papaver somniferum), grown locally in the Maldives, were popular until relatively recently when the plants became classed as illegal.

However, while quite a few of the "reality altering" substances are illegal and carry prison sentences for possession and consumption, there exist psychoactive substances that do not have any restricting legislation on it. In fact, there are quite a few substances that are available right at home or at the convenience shop down the road. Here are a few of the substances available in the Maldives that "supposedly" have psychoactive/psychedelic properties.


Morning Glory (Ipomoea violacea)
Morning Glory is a non-native plant variety that had been imported into Maldives. The plants are grown and sold freely. Being an imported plant, they are mostly grown as a decorative garden plant. Among the various morning glory varieties, several are known to contain LSA (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide), a chemical similar to LSD, in amounts enough to create hallucinatory effects. The varieties commonly known as "Heavenly Blue", "Pearly Gates", "Flying Saucers", "Wedding Bells", "Summer Skies" and "Blue Star" posses these properties which amusingly, to say the least, are proudly grown in some of the homes in Male'.

Nutmeg
While nutmeg is not known to grow locally in the Maldives its products are available freely, especially for use as a spice. The red mesh covering of the nutmeg nut is even used as a traditional medicine ingredient in the Maldives. However, it is the nut itself that presents the psychoactive properties! Ingestion in the right amount will cause an altered state of mind that is very intense and hallucinatory.

San Pedro
There are many varieties of cacti being imported to the Maldives and San Pedro is undoubtedly among them. It is legal everywhere in the world. This harmless looking cactus packs a punch of mescaline although the amount of mescaline it contains varies with the particular variety. The Native Americans used another similar variety of cactus known as peyote, which contains a stronger dose of mescaline, for their spiritual rituals in order to gain "prophecies" and reach an "enlightened" state.

Passion Flower
Yep, that harmless looking plant whose fruit we make juice out of has varieties that contain sedative chemicals that is supposed to give a mild high. All the parts of the plant, especially the leaves, are rich in these chemicals and can be used to relax by boiling the leaves in order to make a "tea".

Mimosa
There are a few varieties of mimosa in the Maldives. The potency of the plant comes from the presence of DMT, a powerful psychedelic. The type "Mimosa Hostilis" is attributed to as having this chemical. I am not sure of the plant's exact identity but apparently "ladhu gas" (the plant that closes its leaves when you agitate it via touch) belongs to the mimosa family.


This list is ofcourse non-exhaustive and there are a few other plants like "salvia" which I suspect is also grown in the Maldives oblivious of its psychoactive power. Extra information on these and more can be found on erowid.org, which is an excellent resource on plants and drugs and happens to be where I got most of the information here.

Disclaimer: This information serves to cater for the intellectual enrichment of sane, curious individuals. It is not my intention to encourage unapologetic unleashing of scary monsters and/or morphing time and space into unrecognizable landscapes by the means of chemically induced altered states of consciousness and perception for nefarious purposes.

People have been bashing Microsoft's latest incarnation of its popular operating system, Windows Vista, ever since its conceptual stages. I don't know what people were expecting of the new operating system but some people claim that Vista is a disappointment. Me? I beg to disagree!

Some of Microsoft's OSes have indeed been dodgy, like Windows 95 or 98. However, of late, their software have been better and a lot more stable. Windows 2000 was pretty solid as a server OS. Windows XP was a decent OS for home and office use. I've used all of Microsoft's OS at some point in time although Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 has served as my main workhorse OS(es) for the past 6 or so years. Windows 2003 Server is undoubtedly the most stable Windows release, atleast in my experience. Despite it being a server OS, I used it for all my work on my laptop and since I keep my laptop switched on throughout the day I can say it goes without crashing or needing a restart for weeks. Since I move around quite a bit, I rely on the "hibernate" feature to retain the machine's state and Windows 2003 do well in that department to help me keep my work uninterrupted. I consider that more than acceptable performance as an OS...

I moved from Windows 2003 to Windows Vista last week after Microsoft included the Vista Business edition DVD in the list of Microsoft software that is downloadable to our university students via the Microsoft Academic Alliance program. I thought I'd jump the chance and grab my own copy of Vista since it comes with my own key so that I can avoid the registration and activation hassles that we, the pirate software ridden Maldivians, usually have to put up with . I chose to go for a clean install rather than an upgrade as Vista has quite a few issues with "older" software. Starting afresh also gave me a chance to get rid of the accumulated mess that I've made now and then.

Vista installed automatically and uneventfully after a short wizard driven process of collecting the information it wanted. My laptop booted straight into Windows and Vista had picked up and installed all the drivers except for the built-in Bluetooth module. What becomes apparent from the first boot is the shift toward a more graphical user interface. The new Aero skin gives Vista a visibly different feel to that of XP/2003 and the various graphical enhancements make for some good eye candy. Font smoothing, the technology that makes fonts looks so much better, is now enabled by default unlike previous versions - it's something I always had enabled manually in previous Windows'es. But it wasn't the looks of Vista that impressed me - it was the added options, the extra utilities and bits of software that has been integrated and united into the OS that really caught me eye. Windows Explorer, the taskbar, the Control Panel, the administration options etc have undergone changes. The security options have been beefed up - an adequate firewalling solution comes in the form of Windows Firewall and spyware/rogueware protection is offered by Windows Defender. The image viewing program has improved, although it is still not in the same league as ACDSee. Networking has been enhanced - Windows automatically figures out the network, finds nearby devices and has extensive Wifi support. Voice recognition and control is available out-of-the-box and is effective throughout the OS. There is also built in support for mobile devices via the cool new Windows Mobile Device Center which allows me to sync with my mobile phone easily. Fax, scanning and CD burning is available by default. A contacts manager and a calendaring program is also now available with the default install. The boot (and resume from hibernation) time has also increased significantly.

Anyway, enough of sugar-coating Vista. It's been a week since I moved to it, I've had my laptop switched on all the time as usual and Vista has remained stable thus far. If you are looking to move to Vista, do so by all means as long as your computer fits the hardware requirements.

>hibernate<

Quite a bitta time since I last blogged! University resumed on the 15th after a month of break for winter holidays and I've been just swamped with work. Well, that or more likely my effort to, for once in my life, shift into the "normal" sleep-wake cycle is turning sour and leaving me drained and vegetative.

This semester at uni should be quite interesting but is fully loaded with various coursework and projects. Of most interest to me is the mobile robot which we will be building over the next few weeks as part of the engineering applications module. Once we create the microcontroller based electronic circuits that power the robot, we will add the locomotive mechanisms and tackle programming the software that would make it do whatever magic we aspire it to do. A bit of artificial intelligence added to it will make it slightly more "intelligent" and interesting than say a computer mouse or perhaps as smart as some random primitive insect. We continue on with the neural networks module this semester and I have yet to tackle the second coursework for the module which requires building an application that uses multilayer perceptron (artificial neural networks). I am quite looking forward to the new set of lectures on AI concepts, which I reckon would keep my eyes open during the lecture unlike the neuroscience lectures which I have already had some unfortunate shut-eye moments. I sure am glad there aren't any electronics/circuits module this semester - we had a surplus of them last semester :s

Anyway, it’s the time of year when I realise that exams are only a few months away and that I have a lot of read and prepare for. Sigh. On second thought, I guess I can afford a few more months before I need to panic! Wish me luck

I saw an interesting video clip on YouTube today. It is a clip from a program broadcast by Television Maldives featuring the life of a chap named Hussein Moosa from Hanimaadhoo island, Haa Dhaal Atoll. The program follows around his daily schedule a bit and features interviews with him where he rambles on and on (with a cutesy "island" accent) about his childhood (his parents died), why he didn't marry (too much responsiblity?!), what he's seen through his life time (bodu thadhu, Mohd Ameen and Nasir presidency) and a myriad of other things. Quite an entertaining and amusing clip...

Check it out on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIS3eTWagws